


Of Love, Lust and Loss

by stellarmeadow



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Introspection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/pseuds/stellarmeadow
Summary: Buck muses.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan “Buck” Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 80





	1. Addiction

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't think I can blame anyone other than my own brain for this one. Well, maybe my brain and a small helping of Jack Daniels.
> 
> Originally a one shot, but now a WIP. Because...Buck.

Buck is no stranger to addiction, okay? 

He’s familiar with all the common ones—alcohol, drugs, gambling, and even—rather intimately—sex. 

What he’s not familiar with is an addiction to someone’s smile. 

Well, okay, not just the smile, but everything that goes with it. The smile is good, sure, pearly white teeth with sharper than normal canines involved, but Buck’s not afraid to admit that a little biting can be good during sex so yeah, that just adds to the allure. 

But beyond the smile is the…amusement is too light a word. The sheer joy in finding something that funny, the ability to laugh at something. The way Eddie seems to find it genuinely surprising that things can be that funny.

Yeah, causing that to happen is fucking addictive. 

He gets the feeling that Eddie hasn’t had a lot to laugh at over the years. Afghanistan was a laugh riot, Buck is just sure of that—not. And Shannon sounded like she was just a laugh a minute. 

Oh and Eddie’s parents? Yeah, one drunken night of stories and Buck doesn’t need to think about them ever again, thanks. 

And he’d thought his own parents were bad.

There’s Chris, sure. But Chris is more pure joy than laughter. More a reason to believe that there really is a God and he or she brought some sunshine to life than anything else. 

But that’s not the kind of smile Buck is addicted to. His high is the smile that’s laughing at some hidden joke, some joke that most of the rest of the world would screw its face up at and go…what? 

That in-joke between two people, the one that hints of an intimacy that can’t be bothered to stretch beyond a personal bubble of two? That’s the good stuff. The stuff that they don’t make rehab for because no one really ever wants to get off it in the first place. 

Like when Buck says ‘potato’ and Eddie nearly falls off the couch laughing, his face in that wide grin that is nothing but amusement in its purest form, amusement that only the two of them get because no one else was there. 

Because they practically have their own language. 

Because there’s shared DNA, and then there’s shared intimacy, and then there’s shared language, and it’s that last one that everyone wants, everyone _craves_ and that’s what Buck has with Eddie, and he doesn’t want to lose it, doesn’t ever want to let it go.

And then Shannon waltzes back into Eddie’s life, like she has a right to. Like it’s hers to play with.

And it’s like Buck goes deaf.

***


	2. Chasing the High

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, turns out what was a one shot is like 15 chapters or so, maybe? Sorry about that...

The scene is way more familiar than Buck is comfortable thinking about. He watches as Hen and Chim hover over someone too young to be on the brink of death like this. Accidents are bad enough. Shit happens—he’d known that even before he became a firefighter. And it doesn’t care how old you are.

But to systematically destroy yourself with drugs? That’s one he can’t understand. 

“I’ve got no pulse,” Chim says, followed quickly by Hen’s, “Starting compressions.” 

She’s pushing on the guy’s sternum like there’s hope, but Buck knows the look she and Chim exchange, knows that they’re putting their all into a dead guy, because there’s the occasional exception to every rule, and this one might be it. 

“Call it,” Bobby says quietly. 

Buck shifts, his arm meeting Eddie’s, a barely-there pressure through their gear. “I don’t get it,” Buck says. “Why do people do that to themselves?”

“Some people?” Bobby’s still there, watching as Chim and Hen start to pack up. “To dull the pain. Others? Because we’ll do anything to feel alive. To get a high.”

“Yeah, but drugs? When there are so many other things out there that work?”

“Everyone has a different addiction that makes them feel alive, Buck. Connected to the world. Some people do drugs, others have too much sex.” He gives Buck a pointed look. “And some run into burning buildings.”

Bobby walks off. Buck stares after him for a moment before he looks to Eddie. “We run into buildings to help people.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get a high out of it.” Eddie shrugs. “People chase highs in different ways. We’re just lucky—"

“--that we get paid to do it, yeah, I get it.” 

Eddie flashes that grin, the private one they have, that makes Buck feel good that there’s someone who understands him. Someone he doesn’t have to explain things to, even if Shannon is back, if Eddie isn’t spending quite as much time with him, just that is enough to send a little something racing through Buck. 

Burning buildings weren’t the only high out there after all.

***


	3. Settling

Leaving Abby’s place was the right thing to do, but it leaves Buck without a whole lot. He has no girlfriend, not even the one he hasn’t really had for months, and he has no place to live. 

He has family, though, and Chim is happy to let him stay at his place, at least for a while, which is good, because Buck doesn’t want to disrupt Maddie’s newfound independence, and as for Eddie….

Yeah, that’s not where he needs to go right now on so many levels. 

And then they meet Lola. 

Buck helps Eddie take down the ‘See me Norman’ sign, wondering how a relationship that clearly had that much passion bottled up inside had turned into blind ignorance. At what point did two people just stop communicating? How was that even possible if they loved each other that much?

“Weird, huh?” Eddie says. “He went from not seeing her to being unable to stop kissing her pretty quick.”

“Yeah.” Because Lola and Norman are all over each other, despite Athena’s ‘you have got to be kidding me with this bullshit’ look. Buck turns back to Eddie, noticing signs of strain that weren’t normally quite so deep in his face. “Hey, Chim and I are going to dinner after work. Wanna come?”

Eddie bites at his lower lip just long enough for Buck to want to reach out and pull on it, see if he can get Eddie to spill the million and one things that Buck can see going on behind the stoic face Eddie wears like a mask. 

“I can’t,” Eddie says finally. 

Something about the way he says it makes Buck push. “Why not? Chris is at Pepa’s with his cousins, is there somewhere else you gotta be?”

He can tell by Eddie’s slight response that there is, and he knows what it is before Eddie says, “I’m having dinner with Shannon.”

“Oh, got it,” Buck says, pasting on a smile. “Next time then.” 

Buck walks around to the other side of the truck before Eddie can say anything else. 

***

Buck doesn’t know quite what to do when he meets Thomas. 

The man’s husband is lying a few feet away, crushed, and Thomas is a completely different kind of crushed that no blanket Buck can drape over him is ever going to fix. 

“We only ever wanted to go together,” Thomas says. “That’s love.” 

“I’m sorry. I really am. “Buck glances over where Eddie is covering Mitchell up. “I guess I can only hope to find something that good.”

“You don’t find it, son. You make it.”

Those words stick in Buck’s head as he’s looking at the photo album, before Thomas’s death drives them out. They come back like ghosts on the ride to the firehouse, though, bouncing around in Buck’s mind. 

Maybe that’s why people have so much trouble with relationships. They talk about falling in and out of love, or in and out of relationships, and even in and out of people’s beds. Always falling, never making the decision, or taking the blame. Never thinking about putting in the work. 

He looks over at Eddie, who’s staring ahead, lost in his own thoughts. Eddie, who took more than his share of the blame for his marriage going off the rails. Who is working on trying to make things right, making a decision to try, especially for Christopher. 

Thomas had one piece wrong, though. All the work in the world wouldn’t help if it was the wrong person. 

But when that person wasn’t available, settling for someone else and putting in the work there was the only alternative to being alone. 

***


	4. Green Eyes

It’s just coffee. 

That’s what he tells himself all the way to the coffee shop. It’s just coffee. If he doesn’t like it, if he doesn’t like her, he can bail. 

The conversation is nice. A little awkward at times, talking over each other and laughing about it, cheeks going pink. But it’s…okay.

It’s enough. 

So he goes out with her again, and again. They fall into bed and he keeps seeing her. She’s nice and she’s uncomplicated. 

She’s what he thinks Abby was probably like when she was younger, and that doesn’t hurt. Abby cracked his heart, but she’d built it up first, and he’s not sure he’d have it now without her. 

He likes Aly. They don’t entirely speak the same language, but Thomas’s words pop into his head at the oddest moments now. 

You don’t find love. You make it.

He doesn’t have to work that hard at it with Aly, though. She travels a lot for work. His world isn’t any quieter when she’s gone. She doesn’t take up a lot of space in his head, whether she’s there or not. 

His world is still a little muted now, with Eddie spending more time with Shannon, and Buck doing his best to keep his thoughts on that from his own head, let alone Eddie’s ears. 

He’s not exactly an unbiased party. 

He’s so busy trying not to look like he’s paying attention that he doesn’t notice at first when Shannon walks in. It’s only when he tracks on the words ‘—a conversation that doesn’t end up in bed’ that his head snaps up and he vaguely recognizes her from a picture in Chris’s room.

Apparently Eddie’s been _seeing_ a little more of Shannon than he let on.

Buck keeps smiling, keeps talking to kids and parents, but he has almost no idea what he says, because one eye and most of his attention is on the locker room, watching Eddie and Shannon talk. Eddie paces the room like a caged animal, and either Shannon’s not aware of what she’s doing, or she doesn’t care. 

If this is how it was between them back in Texas, no wonder Eddie enlisted. 

Eddie leaves the room first, his head down, making sure to avoid eye contact with anyone, even Buck. He’s very good at it, too—Buck watches the whole time and never catches his eye once. 

***


	5. It’s Complicated

Buck doesn’t ask. 

Doesn’t need to, not really. He can read Eddie like a book. Eddie’s afraid of Chris getting hurt—and probably a little afraid of getting hurt himself, not that he’d ever admit to that. 

Or possibly any of it, because God forbid Eddie Diaz have an emotion. 

So Buck doesn’t ask. It’s Eddie’s life, and when he wants to talk, he’ll talk. Shannon pushing him to talk is enough pressure, Buck’s not going to add to it.

When Eddie asks if Buck wants to go with him and Chris to see Santa, Buck says, “Duh?” An evening with Eddie and Chris, and a chance to enjoy some Christmas lights?

Unless it wasn’t just Eddie and Chris….

“Shannon busy?” Buck asks. 

Eddie gets that look, the one where he thinks he’s hiding the fact that there’s more to a story than he wants to tell. 

He’s really not, but Buck lets him have his little comforts.

“I haven’t told Christopher she’s here.” 

For a second, Buck is sure he heard wrong. But then he remembered this is Eddie Fucking Diaz’s Emotional Tilt a Whirl. Of course things are going to be ass backwards and upside down. 

Demanding answers (or sanity) from Eddie rarely ever worked—and if Shannon had taken the time to learn that, she might have seen Christopher by now. “Okay,” Buck said, no judgment in his tone. 

The bell went off, and with it, the slightly open face Eddie had been wearing. “We can grab Chris after work,” Eddie said. “That okay?”

Buck nodded as they ran for the truck.

***

They’re watching Christopher and waiting when Eddie says, “So? You’re not gonna say anything?”

Nope. Nothing. “About what?”

“You know what about.”

He does. But he’s not playing that game. If Eddie wants to talk, he can talk. But Buck isn’t Shannon and he’s not forcing it, even if Eddie is trying to make him. “I figured it was none of my business.” 

“It’s not.” 

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“It just kinda happened, okay?. It’s not like I planned it.”

Like Buck needed to be told that. “I never said you did.” 

“I only ever reached out to her because I needed her help getting Christopher into his new school.” 

“Totally understandable.” As is the way Eddie is not looking Buck in the eye—hell, he’s barely even looking in Buck’s direction. 

“We just kind of…ended up in bed.”

Okay, Buck doesn’t need to hear more about that. “These things happen,” he says. “It’s not like you’re breaking any Commandments. You guys are still married.”

“Yeah,” Eddie’s mouth says, but his pause, like his face, says otherwise. “I’m sneaking around behind my kid’s back with his mother.” 

Oh. “Christopher doesn’t know?”

“I don’t know what he knows. Kids sense things, right? The other day I made her sneak out so he wouldn’t see her there.”

“You’re trying to protect your kid. I mean, she ran out on him, right?”

Eddie doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I ran out first,” he says finally. “I ran out on both of them.”

His voice…fuck if Buck can remember hearing him ever sound that raw. He waits, afraid to break whatever bubble they have around them that’s letting Eddie actually _talk_ for the first time…ever.

“See, when Christopher was diagnosed, I was in Afghanistan, right at the end of my tour. Instead of going back home…I reenlisted.” Eddie keeps looking at Christopher as he says, “I told myself it was to pay the bills.”

“But you were running away, too,” Buck finishes for him. 

It’s not a question, none of it is. Their language is, as always, in sync, even if they’re not spending quite as much time together as they were. And there’s still nothing quite like that feeling of just _knowing_ someone like that. 

If they made it as a drug, Buck would be first in line. 

“Yeah. But I got to pretend like it was for a noble cause, to serve my country.” He makes real eye contact with Buck for the first time since Shannon dropped in on the station earlier. “When Shannon broke? Nobody thought she was a hero. She just got called evil.”

If Eddie really thinks that, then why hide Shannon? “And now she wants back in his life.”

“Yeah.” 

“So why don’t you let her?” Buck asks. “Seems like she’s already back in yours.” 

“That’s what’s got me confused,” Eddie says. “Would I be doing it for Christopher? Or for me?”

Both, but he doesn’t think Eddie’s so much looking for an answer as he is trying to figure out one on his own. 

“Sex complicates everything,” Eddie says at last.

Maybe…if it’s not with the right person. 

But Eddie will have to pull that out of his subconscious on his own.

Christopher finishes with Santa, which finishes the conversation. Eddie picks him up and walks away, but before Buck can follow, the elf stops him. “You two have an adorable son,” she gushes. 

The words hurt in a way he would never have expected, if he’d ever thought about it at all. Buck opens his mouth to explain, but decides it’s not worth it. 

And if it’s because he wants to feel like it’s real, even if for a minute, who has to know? 

***


	6. Effort

It’s not that Buck wishes ill on anyone, but at three in the morning in the middle of a twenty-four hour shift, when most of the house is trying to catch some sleep and he can’t, it’s impossible not to hope for the bell to ring. 

He’s on the couch reading when he hears soft footsteps just before the couch dips beside him. “Hey,” Eddie says quietly.

Buck marks his place and gives Eddie a ready smile. “Hey.” 

“Can’t sleep?”

Buck shakes his head. “You?”

“No.” 

He wants to talk, Buck can see it. He can also imagine what it’s about. Since Eddie and Chris have been spending more time with Shannon, Eddie has developed a new face, one he only wears when he’s alone with Buck, and one that means he wants to talk about Shannon. 

Well, when he _needs_ to talk about Shannon. If it were up to what Eddie wants, he would barely speak at all.

“So what’s on your mind?” Buck asks after a moment, just enough to let him know that Buck’s here without demanding anything. 

Eddie sighs before he glances at Buck. “Shannon.” 

“Understandable,” Buck says, in a noncommittal, ‘I’m listening’ way.

Eddie gives him a wry grin, like he’s figured out Buck’s game and is amused by it. “Christopher has taken to having her back almost like she was never out of his life.” 

“That’s…good?”

“I guess.” Eddie draws in a long breath and blows it out in a rush, teeth worrying at his lower lip. “It’s just…it’s so easy for him.” Another breath. “I just feel like—I mean, it’s not as easy for me. Isn’t it supposed to be easy?”

 _You don’t find love. You make it._ “I’ve heard that love isn’t easy, that you have to work at it.” 

“Maybe,” Eddie says with a shrug. 

Maybe Thomas was right, and maybe the fact that love is something you have to work at is a sign that this…thing between him and Eddie is something entirely different. Too effortless to be love.

***


	7. Reassurance

Buck sits on the hospital bench, staring at the ceiling to avoid looking at Bobby and Athena. They’re wasting valuable time when they could be following whatever leads are on that phone, and Buck is just about done with this shit.

And then Eddie’s there, with his, “Oh, I know what you were thinking,” without question, without judgment. 

Of course he does, just like he knows Buck is beating himself up. He also probably knows his, “This isn’t your fault,” isn’t going to make a difference, but he offers it anyway. 

Buck can hardly believe it when Athena takes him with her to try to track down Maddie. He’d have only followed her anyway—which she and Bobby probably knew—but it’s a lot easier working with her than sneaking around her. 

But it doesn’t make it any faster or less painful.

The speed with which Maddie’s coworkers bent the rules to help was a testament to her relationship with them. It gives Buck hope, but it’s the last hope he has for a while. 

He gets random texts from Eddie—a no-change update on Chim, a picture of Chris at the hospital—little things to…well, he’d say help, but Eddie would know that’s useless. Mostly just to keep him from going insane. 

He’s scrolling back through them when he catches Athena shooting him looks. He meets one, and she looks at the phone, then him again, but doesn’t say anything. And whatever that look means, he doesn’t have the translation. 

He wonders if he took a picture of it and sent it to Bobby, he could translate for Buck. Or would Bobby even need a picture? Are Bobby and Athena as in sync as Buck and Eddie? And if so, what would that say?

Nothing. It wouldn’t say anything.

“We’re gonna find her, Buck,” Athena says.

Buck nods, but doesn’t ask the one question front of mind – will they find her alive or…?

No, he’s not going there. They’ll find her alive. 

Buck’s phone buzzes, and he looks down at the message from Eddie.

_Maddie’s a fighter. She’ll make it through this._

He can’t help but smile at the message and the timing. When he looks up, Athena does that phone, Buck look again.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing.”


End file.
